White House to unveil Presidential Innovation Fellows

The White House will officially unveil its Presidential Innovation Fellows during an event on Thursday at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

The event will feature U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park and Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel, who will introduce the fellows for the intiative that was first announced in May.

"This new initiative is bringing in top innovators from outside government to work with top innovators inside government to create real and substantial changes that will in a very short time frame benefit the American people, save taxpayers money, and help create new jobs," said Todd Park on the White House blog.

Selected from a pool of nearly 700 applicants, the fellows will spend six months in Washington working on five high-impact projects aimed at supporting entrepreneurs, small businesses, job growth and the economy.

The fellows will focus on the following five programs:

MyGov (@ProjectMyGov) will create a rapid prototype of a streamlined online system that citizens will be able to use to easily access the information and services that are right for them from across the federal government.

Open Data Initiatives (@ProjectOpenData) will accelerate and expand our efforts to make government data more publicly accessible in “computer-readable” form and spur the use of those data by entrepreneurs as fuel for the creation of new products, services, and jobs.

The 20% Initiative (@ProjectTwenty) will work to transition “the last mile” of international development assistance payments from cash to electronic methods – lowering administrative costs, promoting financial inclusion, and reducing theft, fraud, and violence.

RFP-EZ (@ProjectRFPEZ) will develop a new process and online marketplace that will make it vastly easier for the government and small high-growth tech startups to do business with each other, effectively opening up the government market to these startups as never before and enabling the government to buy better, lower-cost tech solutions from the full range of American businesses.

Blue Button for America (@ProjectBlueBtn) will spread the ability for millions of Americans to easily and securely download their own health information electronically, empowering them to take that information with them should they change insurer or provider and share it with their loved ones or doctors if they choose, all while fueling the emergence of time-saving, money-saving, and even life-saving products and the businesses and jobs that those products will support.

The event will be livestreamed at www.whitehouse.gov/live on Thursday at 10 a.m.

Park will host Twitter office hours at 5 p.m. Thursday to discuss the program. The general public can participate in the discussion by submitting questions on Twitter using the hashtag #WHChat or following the the @WHLive and @WhiteHouseOSTP Twitter accounts.